Am I One Alive?

I am not yet formed; I remain a shadow
The waters slap at my skin
They roll and lap and swirl within me too
My lungs breathe these inky pools
Before I am
But am I
one: alive? Or yet to be
Silenced either way
I drink you in with every breath
And you need only close your eyes to have me
disappear
But I cannot escape you
Unless it is in forceful extraction
Or pains that push me down
Either way I am subjected
To your wants, your needs, your pleads
These deeds you do
That do me in
or in me do a death
Either way I am subjected to acceptance
or rejection
If I could choose
I’d drown in these prison waters
To keep the pain
from you

Salmon Run

Not much more than nine years on my hide
you took me on a five hour drive
to the riverside once oft visited
by you as a lad, with your Daddy, I suppose

Your hands pointed here and O! over there!
Remembering a limp tire swing slung over
that old Maple's arm
and how the glassy water reached to pull you in

Then you would surface like a slimy fish-boy, laughing
And your Daddy laughing too
Cupping your hands within his own in the shallows,
patient as the minnows hurry through your fingers
until
you catch the pudgy one
and your father drops it in his mouth,
swallowing it alive
your eyes open
wide.

You are remembering.

But now there's pain within those eyes
and your wide shoulders droop with a burden unfamiliar to you
Like a vagrant stranger roosting on your porch
As you skip
a stone that
shatters
any smooth reflection.

And
your
memories

sink
with the rock, for these waters
do not gush with what you recall when you were nine

Your Daddy's gone and you've returned here
Like the salmon run upstream
Past times struggling as you fight the current
nearly drowning in the change

But you have spawned my own memories
and so I revisit with my son
that he may be immersed in his own wonders
His mirth drenching my distress of finding my seasoned mind’s pictures do not match
these sketches here

So wade these ancient waters here with me
Even if those hundred seasons passed by

still, as your Daddy rooted you on this shore and
you carved me
in the bark
So my son's son will bleed his name into the sap
beside his Daddy's and mine and your Daddy's and yours
And we'll all drink from these

As the river runs